1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to a method of granulating and disintegrating molten material and grinding stock as well as to an arrangement for granulating and disintegrating blast furnace slag, clinker or the like, wherein molten slag is cooled with water under formation of a glass phase.
2. The Prior Art
Molten blast furnace slag, as a rule, is granulated by aid of water in order to obtain an amorphous product solidifying in the glass phase, i.e., a metastable phase. After a grinding procedure, such a product may be admixed to cements as a hydraulically active component. With such a mode of operation, the latent heat of the melt flow is converted into a low temperature heat of water and cannot be further utilized.
Also when cooling molten steel slags, the heat usually is cooled by ambient air via radiation and convection procedures. Waste heat of this kind cannot be readily utilized technologically, either.
On the whole, the latent heat of melt is extremely poorly utilized thermodynamically and technologically in all of the known granulation and cooling processes for slags, the originally contained energy substantially being used to store the originally contained energy in the form of the metastable glass phase of the end product and to prevent transformation into a stable crystalline state.